Should parents allow their kids to play with BB guns?

BB guns and other nonpowder guns are often thought of as toys, but they injure as many as 21,000 Americans each year, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. On Christmas day, a Florida boy was among those who got injured this year.

In “A Christmas Story,” the only thing on 10-year-old Ralphie Parker’s Christmas list is a Daisy “Red Ryder” — the carbine-action, 200-shot lightning loader, range-model air rifle with a shock-proof, high-adventure combination trail compass and sundial built into the stock. It’s the “the Holy Grail of Christmas gifts.”

It’s a scene right out of Humorist Jean Shepherd’s A Christmas Story, only this story takes place in Palm Beach, Florida, so the cast of charters is a little different.

A boy gets a pellet gun for Christmas, and tries out his new toy by shooting his autistic cousin in the buttocks, according to the Treasure Coast and Palm Beaches news site. The boy’s stepfather, Christopher Fred Cady, a registered sex offender, decides he needs to teach his stepson a lesson, so he grabs the gun and shoots the boy in the chest. Pow!

The boy ends up at grandma’s house with a huge welt, and Cady ends up in jail with a child abuse charge, and he’s being held without bail for failing to report a change in address or his name as a sex offender.

“Maybe Cady would have been better served to force the boy to watch the 24-hour marathon of A Christmas Story to show him what happens when you get a BB gun for Christmas. Everybody knows you’ll shoot your eye out – or get popped in the chest,” writes Todd Wright in NBC Miami’s Weird News column.

This story brings up a good question: Should young kids — say, under age 16 — have BB guns?

Nonpowder guns (BB, pellet, and paintball guns and air rifles) cause roughly 21,000 injuries annually, with about 4 percent resulting in hospitalization, according to a 2004 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) report.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends kids under 16 not use high-velocity BB guns or pellet guns. Between 1990 and 2000, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission reported 39 nonpowder gun-related deaths, of which 32 were children younger than 15 years.

Of course, BB gun enthusiasts are loaded with information to counter these statistics. “When we talk about 21,000 kids were injured, we have to stand back and say, what did that injury mean? Was it a finger cut or did it go into his brain?” California air-gun collector Robert Beeman told the Washington Post after the AAP report was released. Beeman said the pediatrics statistics even count as a “BB accident” when someone sticks a BB in his ear. “What I’m saying is, for every several billion BBs produced, there is only one injury recorded,” he said. “BB guns and air guns are probably among the safest recreational objects around.”

And then there’s the nostalgia factor. Many people have fond memories of playing with their BB guns as kids. My father tells stories about running through the woods with a BB gun in hand.

“In the ’40s, ’50s, even ’60s, they were a rite of passage, held in the same esteem as a good pocketknife,” writes Don Oldenburg in the Washington Post story.

“In my town, everybody had a BB gun and everybody shot everybody,” noted environmental activist Paul Watson, who grew up four decades ago in the small Canadian coastal town of St. Andrews in New Brunswick, told the Post. “We used to play ‘Cowboys and Indians’ with real BB guns and bows and arrows.”

Oldenburg wisely points out, “America’s Norman Rockwell-like nostalgia for the seemingly benign BB gun may be off target.” The little boy who was shot by his stepfather on Christmas day would probably agree.

What do you think? Can playing with BB guns help kids learn important lessons? Or are nonpowder guns too dangerous for little hands? Did you have a BB gun as a kid?